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Sega Cancels Merger With Sammy
After many complicated and confusing rumors, Bloomberg Japan seems to have confirmed that Sega Corp has abandoned plans to merge with Sammy. Apparently, Sega couldn't agree financial terms with Sammy, who specialize in pachinko machines, and also have some home and arcade-based videogame development. The front-runner for a Sega merger/sale is now Namco, but Microsoft and Electronic Arts have also been mentioned as possible suitors. The saga continues..
Preferrably Namco would be the one to get Sega.
Microsoft getting them will just kill the fun for everyone else, as you'd never see a Sega game for anything but XBox.
And we all love the XBox, now don't we?
EA isn't much of a choice either, their focus seems to be too much on the sports games, and I fear Sega's other divisions would be pared down in favor of the soccer/baseball/etc. divisions.
Just gotta wait and see.
If you want to know what would likely happen to Sega if EA bought them/"merged" with them(ha ha), take a look at anyone other company that got absorbed by the EA behemoth. OSI/Origin comes to mind in particular, though Bullfrog suffered a horrible fate as well.
I estimate that Sega would add their sports expertise to the dev team in EA sports and the rest of the company would either fold or become a factory for Sonic games(and even then, not for very long).
So . . . maybe we should be sad that Sammy didn't merge with Sega or buy Sega.
Pachinko is a load of balls......
(ugh!)
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
A Sega-Namco would consolidate into Japan's largest arcade operater and hold 30% of the arcade market. Their consolidated software sales would command 10% of the market (Sega is 9th, Namco is 8th) but they would have some of the most coveted longterm licences on the planet like Soul Calibor, Virtua Fighter, Sonic & Tekken between them. An older news.com article points out. The real hope for gamers is Sega independence from Microsoft and EA so gamers could truly get more platform independent games. It would suck to see another Bungie/Halo exclusive to happen. Here's for Namco's success and gamers being lucky enough to see a Virtua Fighter-Tekken Crossover
Sammy is japan's largest pachinko operater, US articles say pinball but its really Pachinko, Japan's equivalent to the slot machine. There was a lot of annalysts questions the merger of Sammy-Sega because both companies don't have a lot in common except the arcade business, and the arcade business has been sliding for years. And yes, Sega is starting to get desperate.
So Sega has cancelled their merger with Sammy. The other options now are Namco, Microsoft and Electonic Arts. I hope Namco wins, or maybe even Microsoft. Microsoft, to be frank, would not be a bad choice at all. Microsoft and EA are kind of polar opposites; they are the two largest entertainment PC software publishers, I do believe, but while EA buys a company and siphons all its talent into what a boardroom wants to see published -- works for earning money, but kills the spirit and originality of the companies like Bullfrog and Westwood -- Microsoft has a tradition of "do as thou wilt" when it comes to its attendant developers. MS gives them money, they give MS good games.
There is, however, one possible problem with Namco merging with Sega -- there would be no more competition left in arcades except between divisions of the same company, and while internal competition can be fierce, it's no replacement for honest to god competition. Witness the WWE. When it bought WCW, it changed its structure to be the Monday show vs the Thursday show. But its quality and ratings have faltered since it lost its real competition.
Dance Dance Revolution was the last great major revolution in arcade gaming. It did what arcades used to do, but haven't done for some time - Provided a gaming experience you cannot get at home. Note the past tense, since I know home pads are now available, but I do believe DDR revitalized a lot of arcades. The atmosphere around a DDR machine is something you simply can't get at home. If I'm not mistaken, DDR had the first new control scheme (used in more than a couple of games) since the light gun.
Arcade competition tended to be between Namco, Williams and Sega. Capcom had its own private war with SNK as well. Then Williams completely folded its arcade division, which leaves Namco and Sega, with Konami running DDR machines. So instead of incrementally improving fighters, racers and light gun games (Tekken vs VF, Time Crisis vs House of the Dead, etc) maybe this would give them a chance to truly compete with the home market and provide games that can only be provided in an arcade setting.
How do you compete with the home market? Present games that the home market cannot handle. Again, I give you DDR. Focus on games that are completely impossible, at the present time, to do at home. DDR did that. A huge eight player fighting game would do that. Daytona's multi-racer network did that. Light gun games do that, for the most part, since the atmosphere is different, which is why arcade light gun games are still being made I suppose.
Instead of trying to increment the quality of competing fighters and racers, how about making them more of an arcade experience? Instead of competing with each other, compete directly with the home market. Gyroscoping shooting games. Masive light gun games. Massive fighting games, with huge screens. Networked arcade games, particularly shooting and driving. And, of course, DDR started this trend, so improve upon that some more.
Make arcades a place to go to to play games you can't play at home. Apart from DDR, arcades haven't been like that for a very, very long time.
(sorry if this rambles a bit, it was originally brainstormed on IRC and reformatted for this post)
"In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, 'Make us your slaves, but feed us.'" -Dostoevsky
Oh great I can see it now - Sonic the Hedgehog replacing the frickin' Paperclip in MS Office.
The same would be likely to happen to all of Sega's software units to one degree or another. It's relatively rare when EA takes a chance on something without a big-time brand behind it (see The Sims and Ultima Online) and, unfortunately, Sega just doesn't seem to get that brand recognition anymore. While some of us might say "Yay! Shenmue!" or "Cool! Panzer Dragoon!" the majority of EA's market would shrug and keep looking for the latest Medal of Honor game.
Except for annexing existing and potential competition in the form of Sega, EA would end up with very little by scooping up Sega. It would probably end up as a plus in the profit column just by disbanding the majority of the development units and selling the arcade unit separately - along with a few of the brands like Virtua Cop - to another company (like Namco, Konami or even Sammy).
As for Microsoft, they too would probably prefer to sell off the arcade unit, but there the Sega software development teams would be far more likely to remain intact (at least based on history). It would give Microsoft an exclusive big-name fighter brand (Virtua), a mascot to call their own (Sonic), a solid Japanese-style RPG brand (Phantasy Star) and a sports game division that could really take off (Microsoft's own sports games aren't bad, especially for being so new; and combining those efforts could end up being brilliant). In the sports area, I could see Microsoft going multiplatform if only to make EA sweat some 44-caliber bullets.
I guess my second-favorite choice for a merger would be Namco, but that's entirely sentimental. Both companies have problems and I'd be less concerned about an arcade monopoly (even with DDR, the arcade scene in the US is abyssmal so I consider that a Japanese problem) than I would be about two troubled companies merging into one bigger troubled company. Don't get me wrong. I would be as happy as anyone to see "Soulcalibur vs. Virtua Fighter" (once - I'm looking at you, Capcom) but I really have to wonder about the advantages, at least in console terms, that particular megacompany would gain from such a merger.
Then again, I'm no business expert. I'm just a guy who plays video games and likes to think that he's smart. Kinda like Ryo Hazuki, but without the butt-kicking.
Microsoft sure would do a good move for themselves if they bought Sega, and launched X-Box2 as Sega in Japan.
That plus all the games. If Microsoft do buy them, I don't think they would close them down, but rather make use of them.
But I am sure someone will stop it before it happens. Best chance for the Sega legacy to live on though.
Sega and Namco already have a long term relationship in a joint venture the two of them went together with Nintendo when they created the Triforce, which is an Arcade Board based on the Gamecube architecture.
This joint venture is not likely to break in the near future, because Nintendo is practically giving them access to a revenue stream using not only the hardware, but also with high-profile franchises such as F-Zero and Star Fox, in exchange of their development expertise. I think this is going to work great and could help to define how things are going to be in the future. (e.g. show executives how things are done right)
It's widely known that merging with Sammy, EA or M$ would actually bring Sega to the black sooner than merging with Namco, because even Namco is not on a very strong financial situation by itself. But Sega developers like Namco the better, because it would be the only way they could stay at the company doing things the way they like.
Meanwhile, Sammy, EA and M$ have the same problem: They don't actually need Sega's developers. They'd basically buy it for the trademarks, branding and IP because they have very different methods on game design, development and marketing.
Mostly every Sega team would be in danger of being disbanded. There are people with different skills, different approaches to gaming and trained in different pieces of hardware. A merger with any of these three companies can only result in the loss of this core philosophy. EA likes very short development cycles with very poor execution, M$ likes exclusivity and Sammy likes amusement machines.
Imagine if Rez, Panzer Dragoon, Shenmue and many other great games could never exist were Sega under any of these three companies' wings. A situation like this can really be an issue for any potential buyer, because it can also affect the buying price, and that's where Sega and Sammy disagreed.
I truly felt something was wrong with this merger when I first heard about it. I remembered another merger Sega planned with Bandai some years ago, which failed miserably, possibly because of the same reasons.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
Nintendo and Sega over the last 2 decades have built up the video games business and have got a lot of IP. Rather than Namco, EA and Microsoft get their hands on Sega brand, characters and classics game titles only to release sequels, it would be fitting if Nintendo would move in for the IP atleast. Combining characters and concepts between Nintendo and Sega titles would allow Nintendo to possess a full set of genre titles. Plus it always opens the possibilities of Mario - Sonic adventures etc. The above is highly unlikely... but would be nice to see.
Think about it. They have similar values, they're both soley games companies, they both have superb development houses, they've been teaming up on things such as the TriForce arcade board, F-Zero GC/AC and the like, and neither of them are afraid of trying new gaming genres out.
Plus, imagine a company that imployed Yu Suzuki,Yuji Naka AND Shigeru Miyamoto. The thought just makes me giddy. It'd give Nintendo one hell of a boost too. With Shenmue, Sonic, Mario, Zelda and Sega Sports titles being GameCube exclusive.
Makes sense to me.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
Please, people. Just look at his previous posts on slashdot. This guy hasn't worked for Sega.